Tag Archives: immigration

Mark Pack

Liberal Democrat members support proposed changes to planning rules, just

By Mark Pack | Fri 7th October 2011 - 7:25 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Some 550 party members responded, and we’re currently publishing the full results.

Our latest survey of party members finds a small majority backing the government’s controversial plans for the planning system in England. By a margin of 48% – 39% Liberal Democrat members in the survey supported the scheme to cut central control over planning but also introduce a presumption in favour of development if plans are sustainable and in line with local policies.

However, …

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged , , , , , and | 5 Comments
Richard Flowers

Opinion: Mike Hancock has grave concerns for a gay constituent facing deportation to Uganda

By Richard Flowers | Tue 9th August 2011 - 6:55 pm

Robert Segwanyi is a gay man from Uganda. Homosexuality is illegal in Uganda, and Robert was imprisoned and, he says, tortured because he is gay.

In June last year, he escaped and fled to Britain.

Now the UK Border Agency want to send him back.

UKBA does not accept he is gay and a judge rejected his appeal claiming that there is no risk to gay people in Uganda.

This is what Amnesty International said about Ugandan Anti-Homosexuality Laws:

Both the current law and the proposed new law violate a number of human rights including the rights to equality and non-discrimination, privacy, liberty and

…

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

What Lib Dem members think about immigration (Part II)

By Stephen Tall | Tue 3rd May 2011 - 7:55 am

Lib Dem Voice has polled our members-only forum to discover what Lib Dem members think of various political issues, the Coalition, and the performance of key party figures. Over 530 party members have responded, and we’re currently publishing the full results.

(Part I of ‘What Lib Dem members think about immigration’ is available to read here.)

LDV asked: Generally speaking, do you think that the issue of immigration has been discussed in Britain too much, too little or about the right amount over the last few years?

    36% – It has been discussed too much
    29% – It has been discussed about

…

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Posted in LDV Members poll | Also tagged and | 11 Comments
Sarah Mulley

The Independent View: Rifts on immigration demonstrate real challenges for the Government

By Sarah Mulley | Fri 15th April 2011 - 5:42 pm

David Cameron’s speech on immigration has unleashed a wave of criticism and debate, both inside and outside the coalition government.  Although some of the fallout tells us more about the political dilemmas facing coalition partners who must now fight an election campaign against each other than it does about immigration, today’s discussions have neatly illustrated some of the challenges facing the Government on this issue.

The first is how to best engage in the public debate.  David Cameron is right to say that “the role of politicians is to cut through the extremes of this debate & approach the subject sensibly …

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Posted in Op-eds and The Independent View | Also tagged | 3 Comments
Mark Pack

Two wins for the Lib Dems in government: human trafficking and visas

By Mark Pack | Tue 22nd March 2011 - 9:43 pm

Two pieces of good news today where a combination of Liberal Democrat and some Conservatives in government have won out over the right of the Conservative Party.

First up, human trafficking – where the opposition of Conservative Euro-sceptics to Britain opting in to the new EU directive has been overcome. Co-Chair of the Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Committee on Home Affairs, Justice and Equality, Tom Brake said:

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Peter Welch

Opinion: what the Guardian isn’t telling you

By Peter Welch | Mon 20th December 2010 - 1:20 pm

Mehdi Hasan has a provocative article in the Guardian So what, Nick Clegg, made you forget liberty? It is standard Guardian fare these days: you can’t trust the Lib Dems.

The “delay” in completing the abolition child detention in deportation cases is the focus of his attack.

To be fair, he acknowledges that Labour hardly look good on the issue:

child detention in this country is one of the most obscene and unforgivable legacies of the ultra-authoritarian New Labour years. In 2001 the Blair government made the populist decision to detain children and families who were subject to immigration

…

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Mark Pack

Immigration: a different kind of challenge?

By Mark Pack | Mon 22nd November 2010 - 8:56 am

Understandably recent debates about immigration, both under Labour and now with the lively debates within the Coalition over an immigration cap (or colander, as the case may be) has focused in on the short-term perspective of what policy is appropriate for the next few years for the UK. The wider context however is very striking:

Close to half of the world’s population now lives in countries with fertility rates below the replacement level, which, as a rough rule of thumb, is 2.1 births per woman. In these states – absent steady compensatory immigration – current childbearing patterns will lead to an

…

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Posted in News | 10 Comments
Mark Pack

Not so much an immigration cap as an immigration colander

By Mark Pack | Thu 4th November 2010 - 12:55 pm

Immigration was one of the issues on which Nick Clegg and David Cameron repeatedly clashed during the general election, so it is no surprise that it has continued to be a source of tension in the coalition. More surprisingly, the fault line in the coalition has not been a simple Lib Dem versus Conservative because many Conservatives are persuaded by the pleas from universities (that they need high fee paying foreign students else the funding higher education would be an even bigger political problem) and from business (that many firms in the UK cannot get the right skilled staff except through immigration).

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Mark Pack

What is happening with ending child detention in immigration cases?

By Mark Pack | Tue 12th October 2010 - 5:25 pm

The subject of child detention for immigration purposes was raised by Liberal Democrat peer Roger Roberts in Parliament yesterday. I’ve expressed my frustration often enough at how journalists sometimes get in the way of the news with their insistence on introducing, talking over and then summarising what other people are saying, rather than letting us hear the actually words for ourselves. So taking a leaf out of my own book here is full transcript of the question and follow-ups from Hansard:

Asked By Lord Roberts of Llandudno: To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they will end child detention in …

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Posted in News | Also tagged and | 7 Comments
Stephen Tall

Lib Dems on child detention: read our lips, it will be ended

By Stephen Tall | Thu 9th September 2010 - 11:58 am

The Guardian today carries a story, Government climbdown on detention of children in immigration centres, which — if it were accurate — would have Lib Dems hopping mad. Thankfully, it’s not accurate.

It was six weeks ago, at his first acting stint at Prime Minister’s Questions, that Nick Clegg formally announced that (as per the Lib Dem manifesto and Coalition agreement) the practise of child detention would end:

It was simply a moral outrage that last year the Labour government imprisoned, behind bars, 1,000 children who were innocent of any wrongdoing whatsoever. This coalition government will once again restore a

…

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Iain Roberts

Daily Mail takes a tip from the BNP

By Iain Roberts | Mon 9th August 2010 - 3:55 pm

A story in today’s Daily Mail looks like the sort of thing you’d expect to find in a BNP leaflet.

The headline says it all

Revealed: The UK maternity units in which only 1 in 10 mothers is of white British origin

Of course there’s variation around the country – always has been, always will be.

Nationally the figures (which appear later on in the Mail article) are:
62% white British
7% other white
5% black
4% pakistani
3% indian
8% other
11% unknown

Concern about immigration is legitimate, but why is the Mail so worried about the mothers’ skin colour?

Posted in News | Also tagged | 11 Comments
The Voice

Kennedy urges coalition to mitigate impact of immigration cap on universities

By The Voice | Sat 10th July 2010 - 1:35 pm

The Press Association reports:

Former Liberal Democrat leader Charles Kennedy has urged the Government to look at ways of “mitigating” the impact of an immigration cap on universities. Mr Kennedy, rector of Glasgow University, challenged universities minister David Willetts over the policy at question time.

“Given the Government’s policy on a cap on immigration, you will be aware Universities UK and many others right across the sector are worried about the impact this will have,” he said. “Ten per cent of university staff across the UK are non-EU nationals – 2,500 staff at the Scottish universities alone.

“What can you do with

…

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Edwin Loo

Opinion: Our approach to immigration must be grounded in fairness

By Edwin Loo | Tue 1st June 2010 - 10:20 am

Many months ago, I wrote a piece on immigration policy for Lib Dem Voice in light of the calls for a variety of illiberal measures from caps to quotas. It is with some regret that I return to this issue now to view what you could call a radically changed landscape. We are now in coalition with the Conservatives, in agreement with the need for a ‘cap’ on ‘non-EU migrants’ and in favour of harder, tougher and nastier barriers against ‘foreigners’. This rhetoric is both disappointing and damaging, not only for myself but also for the thousands of other …

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Mark Pack

The coalition agreement: government transparency and immigration

By Mark Pack | Mon 31st May 2010 - 10:20 am

Welcome to the eleventh in a series of posts going through the full coalition agreement section by section. You can read the full coalition document here.

Unlike the nearly all of the rest of the document, both of these sections lift very heavily from Conservative Party policy, with little of the Liberal Democrat manifesto featuring. However, whilst in the immigration section that means policies which will leave many Liberal Democrats uncomfortable, in the government transparency section this is good news – for truth be told, the Conservative manifesto was rather better than the Liberal Democrat manifesto in this regard.

Our manifesto …

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Tim Starkey

Opinion: A cap on immigration: illiberal and unworkable?

By Tim Starkey | Thu 27th May 2010 - 2:20 pm

The most illiberal policy in the Lib-Con deal is the plan for a cap on immigration. Now, we all know that as part of a coalition we have to put up with policies we dislike, the real problem with this policy is not just that we dislike it but that in the words of the IPPR, it is “unworkable” (see “The Limit to Limits: is a cap on immigration policy a viable policy for the UK?” March 2010). Here’s why:

1) A cap is a clumsy, inflexible mechanism, owing more to Soviet style central planning than to the needs of …

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Posted in News | 29 Comments
Iain Roberts

Did Trident, Europe and immigration make the difference?

By Iain Roberts | Sat 8th May 2010 - 10:43 am

We all know the Lib Dems achieved a result we would have been reasonably happy with at the start of the campaign, but one that came as a bitter disappointment after the highs of Cleggmania.

But why did the Lib Dem vote fall back to 23%, seemingly at the last gasp?

Speaking to Lib Dem supporters on the doorstep in the last week, I was struck by how often the issues of Trident, Europe and immigration came up – and our supporters were genuinely concerned.

In the main, it wasn’t that people disagreed with our policies when I took a couple of minutes …

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Posted in Europe / International and Op-eds | Also tagged | 41 Comments
Bryn Evans

The truth about Lib Dem policy

By Bryn Evans | Tue 20th April 2010 - 7:36 pm

Since Nick Clegg’s success in Thursday’s TV debate, there have been incredible comments made by high-profile Labour and Conservative politicians that have led to questions about how seriously the establishment takes the Liberal Democrats.

On Friday, Michael Gove called the Lib Dems “eccentric” and “outside the mainstream”, and Bob Ainsworth called their policy on Trident “silly”.

How can a political party with 20-30% of voters supporting them be eccentric and outside of the mainstream? Many Labour and Conservative policies could be seen as just that.

The suggestions of not replacing Trident, an amnesty for long-term illegal immigrants and cutting class sizes …

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Posted in The Independent View | Also tagged , , , , , , and | 15 Comments
Stephen Tall

It’s been another great week for George Osborne

By Stephen Tall | Sun 18th April 2010 - 9:45 am

You may ask what could have inspired me to write such a headline. Well, it’s none other than George himself.

As Iain Martin has blogged – twice, he found the Tory shadow chancellor’s state of denial so bizarre – George Osborne has issued a message to Tory supporters assuring them:

It’s been another great week for our campaign.”

Hmmm, and “Other than that Mrs. Lincoln, how did you enjoy the play?”

But then it’s not been a good day for George, having already launched friendly fire against Boris Johnson by attacking the Tory London mayor’s own policy of an amnesty for illegal immigrants.

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Posted in General Election | Also tagged and | 6 Comments
Stephen Tall

Colin Firth on why he’s stopped voting Labour and now supports the Lib Dems

By Stephen Tall | Tue 16th March 2010 - 4:15 pm

The book ‘Why vote Lib Dem’ – edited by Danny Alexander MP, with a foreword by Nick Clegg, and contribututions from 26 individuals – is selling fast.

Its publisher (one Iain Dale, Esq) reports that it “is outselling Why Vote Conservative by a factor of 9 and Why Vote Labour by a factor 25. Indeed, so popular is the LibDem book that we have almost sold out of the entire print run, meaning that we will have to reprint after only ten days of sales.”

He speculates that one reason might be the Lib Dems’ minor coup in persuading …

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Mark Pack

Conservative MP disowns leaflet in immigration row

By Mark Pack | Sun 28th February 2010 - 11:11 pm

From today’s Observer:

David Cameron’s Tories were accused last night of dog-whistle politics after the Conservative leader appeared on the front of flyers saying the floodgates had been opened to mass immigration. Critics say the flyers are alarmist and misleading because they imply limits could be imposed on entrants from EU countries such as Poland.

Last night, the party’s frontbench was forced to distance itself from the hard-hitting material, which was put out under the name of Cameron’s home affairs spokesman, Andrew Rosindell …

The Liberal Democrats’ home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, said: “These flyers play to people’s worst fears in an

…

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The Voice

Opinion: UK Border Agency plunges colleges into crisis

By The Voice | Fri 22nd January 2010 - 2:20 pm

I wrote recently about the train-wreck that is happening before our eyes with the new student visa rules.  Well, there has been a new development. The UK Border Agency has abruptly suspended the visa-sponsoring licences of more than 50 private colleges without giving reasons. All over the place, crisis talks are taking place in the colleges affected, as people try to work out what on earth is happening. Is this more of the deep-rooted incompetence that we have all come to expect from the Home Office, or has a political decision been taken to expel lots of dark faces and …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , and | 34 Comments
The Voice

Opinion: How student visas are creating crime incentives

By The Voice | Sun 10th January 2010 - 11:35 am

I am tired of reading arrant rubbish about student visas in the newspapers. So let me (as someone who helps to administer a small private college) supply an insider’s view of what is really happening.

Most political parties support the new “Points-Based System” of immigration rules as a Good Thing, and maybe it would be, if only the Home Office was fit for purpose. In practice, the UK Border Agency simply cannot keep up with its workload. Therefore the process of licensing private colleges to sponsor student visa applications is running months late and has actually tipped the …

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 3 Comments
Patrick Murray

Opinion: A Liberal Line on Immigration

By Patrick Murray | Fri 23rd October 2009 - 12:30 pm

For me one of the key tenets of liberalism is our commitment to human rights and fairness. This is why I think fighting the fight on immigration is so important.

On last night’s Question Time, a member of the audience asked whether the rise of the BNP had been down to Labour’s failure on immigration. I think there is an element of truth in that, but perhaps not the element of truth that our home affairs spokesman, Chris Huhne, thought.

Over the last ten years we have been subjected to Home Office and Immigration policy made to please the xenophobic, right wing agenda of papers such as the Daily Mail.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 61 Comments
Stephen Tall

What did you make of Chris Huhne’s Question Time performance? #bbcqt

By Stephen Tall | Fri 23rd October 2009 - 10:39 am

So that was the Question Time that was. There is copious assessment of Nick Griffin’s performance, linked to here on LDV.

My views are straightforward. First, Nick Griffin came over badly, but that is immaterial: those who are BNP-inclined will likely have seen him as the victim of a liberal, metropolitan, media stitch-up; and those who despise the BNP will have had their view confirmed.

Secondly, my over-riding sense was of relief that the BNP don’t have a more slick, plausible leader. The moment is ripe for a truly charismatic, attractive, anti-politician to play the demagogue: Nick Griffin is decidedly not that person, thankfully.

Such are my thoughts on Mr Griffin – but what about Chris Huhne’s performance?

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged , , and | 31 Comments
Li-Teck Lau

Opinion: Freedom of speech should not be filled with wrong-speech

By Li-Teck Lau | Mon 31st August 2009 - 4:00 pm

OK, so basically, I will confess to enjoy reading the Daily Mail because it’s full of hate, and hate can be fun to read. Third world (or however you may wish to call it) debt, access to clean water and human rights abuses etc, are all very noble issues, but, at the same time, can get rather boring. Once you’ve read about one genocide, you’ll soon discover they’re all really quite similar.

I got to reading a wonderful Saturday commentary page by a certain Amanda Platell (I understand that she also writes for the Guardian giving a ‘right wing perspective’ on Wednesdays, but I have yet to waste time on it) titled ‘This baby boom will make us all go bust’, referring to the recent publication of birth and death rates . She starts off her piece stating,

Soaring immigration – and a migrant baby boom – has sent Britain’s population rocketing over the 61 million mark. We are now the second most densely populated country in the world, something that will be all too apparent on the roads and trains this bank holiday weekend’.

Ignoring the flame-stoking use of language for the moment, the second sentence claim that Britain has filled up to the point that it is now the second most densely populated country in the world, apparently in an attempt to shock the average housewife sitting in her flower-embroidered sofa into believing she will imminently be accommodating this influx in her garden, is only outdone in its disgracefulness by its shear wrongness.

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Posted in Op-eds | Also tagged and | 26 Comments
Stephen Tall

43% of LDV readers say: yes to managed immigration

By Stephen Tall | Fri 6th February 2009 - 9:36 pm

A couple of weeks ago, LDV asked our readers the question, What’s the liberal response to immigration?
 It sparked a fascinating comments thread, and our poll attracted over 500 votes. Here’s what you told us:

LDV asked: What do you think should be the basis of the UK’s immigration policy?

You told us:

>> 23% (121) Open the borders, and impose no immigration restrictions
>> 43% (225) Have managed immigration, eg through a points system
>> 15% (79) Operate an annual cap on immigration, with work-permits strictly limited to 4-years
>> 18% (95) Close the borders, and accept no more immigrants
Total Votes: 520.

…

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Posted in Voice polls | 11 Comments
Stephen Tall

NEW POLL: What’s the liberal response to immigration?

By Stephen Tall | Tue 13th January 2009 - 9:21 pm

There’s a typically forthright article in today’s Times by David Aaronovitch excoriating all three major political parties for their pusillanimous response to the anti-immigration movement represented by Labour’s Frank Field and the Tories’ Nicholas Soames. His ire was provoked by BBC Radio 4’s Beyond Westminster programme (available here on iPlayer for the next few days) and specifically the responses of the politicians interviewed:

Not one of the pols, Chris Huhne, of the Lib Dems, Damian Green, of the Tories, or Phil Woolas, of Labour, could find anything good to say about immigration, except in passing on quickly to how

…

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Posted in Voice polls | Also tagged and | 38 Comments
Steve Cooke

Opinion: Immigration brings more than economic benefits

By Steve Cooke | Mon 18th December 2006 - 7:11 pm

Earth

A report from the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) has provided an interesting slant on population movements in Britain. The report’s full of interesting stats, which, if I could be bothered to quote them, would probably bury the point of this post in numbers. The thing that really struck me was there are 5.5 million Brits living abroad. That’s 9.2% of the population and means there are more Britains living abroad than foreigners living in the UK.

Related to those figures is the finding that: “a small but significant minority are finding the settlement experience much more challenging. Often these Britons come up against linguistic and cultural barriers that they have not prepared for, and have, in response, clustered together away from the host society.”

Could it be that many Britains fail to integrate with their host communities? Surely not!

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